CHAPTER V

THE FIRST ALLIANCE TERMINATES

NINCE it was already apparent when Adams entered

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office that the chief foreign problem of his administration would relate to France, the government would have been most fortunate had the talents of Thomas Jefferson been available for the ministry to Paris. He, as no one else, could have calmed the troubled waters. But the imperfect electoral machinery of the early republic made the opposition leader Vice President in a Federalist administration. As it was, the President had no representative at a government with which he must carry on important negotiations. Pinckney had not been received by the Directory and had withdrawn to Amsterdam.

Owing to the delays of transmission inherent in an age of sail, Adams did not possess the latest news from Pinckney. The minister carried on an active correspondence in Amsterdam looking toward his eventual recognition and reception at Paris. A change in politics in France rendered his reception likely at the very time when Adams proposed to convert his individual mission into that of a commission. In various ways a single mission would have been more suitable, and the reception of Pinckney would in itself have meant confession of a former error, and the restoration of amicable relations. Moreover Pinckney as a single minister would have spoken with a directness which no commission could express-the less so when its personnel must represent a compromise of parties.

To Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, distinguished Federalist from South Carolina, the President now added John Marshall as a brother Federalist, and Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, a prominent Democrat, a friend of Jefferson and Adams both, but not otherwise especially qualified for his task. Marshall and Gerry joined Pinckney in Holland,

and proceeded thence to Paris, where they had one formal meeting with Talleyrand, after which their conduct of the negotiations became informal and unsatisfactory. Their mission is fortunately unique in American history, as an amazing chapter of intrigue.1

It is well in considering the humiliations to which the ministers were soon to be exposed to be mindful of the circumstances of the times. For eight years France had been in revolution, moderate at first, but marked by constantly increasing violence. The men with whom in normal times Franklin or Jefferson might have dealt, with certainty of courtesy if not success, were now in exile or had been guillotined. Newer and more forceful types succeeded them. The courteous traditions of the foreign office had vanished with the old noblesse. In times so perilous rude strength or wily craft alone succeeded. The existing government at Paris, the Directory, expressed its foreign policies through Talleyrand-a turn-coat bishop of the old régime, who had trimmed his sails to all the newer breezes, and now conducted his department with a corruption well-nigh bottomless.

Weak and struggling America was not the only sufferer from the new French methods of diplomacy. Lord Malmesbury, the British ambassador, distinguished diplomat and representative of the first power in Europe, had causes of complaint very similar to ours. and his mission was looked upon in England as a national humiliation.

THE X. Y. Z. AFFAIR

The civilities of their reception being over, the commissioners discovered that access to Talleyrand was not direct, but ran through secret agents who were later designated as Messrs. X., Y., and Z., whose demands on behalf of their master were unblushingly sordid.2 Talleyrand made three demands preliminary to any negotiation whatsoever. First,

1 The mission is extensively treated in Beveridge, Albert J., The Life of John Marshall (Boston, 1916-1919), vol. II, 214-373.

2 The actual names of the agents for Talleyrand were Hottenguer, Bellamy, and Hauteval.

the American commissioners must present an apology for the language of their President in a message to Congress relating to French conduct in the matter of the farewell to Monroe, and in the refusal to receive Pinckney. Secondly, the United States Government must negotiate a loan to France. Thirdly, the members of the French Directory, save only Merlin, who as Minister of Justice already gained large sums from sales of prizes taken in complete violation of the existing treaty, must be placated by a money gift. The initial payment on this gift was set at £50,000, and the American negotiators were assured that a payment of the sort was only customary, abundant precedents sustaining it.

The commission was not authorized to make any such concessions. But the refusal to pay over the bribe demanded was not expressed in the fiery phrase of "Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute" so often and falsely ascribed to Pinckney. The insult, for such it was, did not provoke the commissioners to hysteria. To pay or not to pay seems actually to have been weighed as a business proposition. But the refusal to meet the demands of the Directory made excellent campaign material when the commissioners returned to the United States and a war fever gripped the American people.

If

The commissioners acted with great prudence. They recognized how wholly the French demands exceeded their instructions. But rather than by a hasty withdrawal from the country, confess the mission's failure, and render certain an immediate war, the commissioners remained at Paris, hoping for a change of spirit on the part of Talleyrand and the Directory. Accordingly on January 27, 1798, they addressed the minister what amounted to an ultimatum. Talleyrand can offer hope of a negotiation, they will be content to bide their time still longer. "If, on the contrary, no such hope remains, they have only to pray that their return to their own country may be facilitated; and they will leave France with the most deep-felt regret, that neither the real and sincere friendship which the government of the United States has so uniformly and unequivocally displayed

for this great republic, nor its continued efforts to demonstrate the purity of its conduct and intentions, can protect its citizens or preserve them from the calamities which they have sought, by a just and upright conduct, to avert." "

3

Talleyrand replied on March 18th. He admitted that the prejudice of the Directory against the Federalist members of the Commission was fatal to negotiation, but declared that "the Executive Directory is disposed to treat with that one of the three, whose opinions, presumed to be more impartial, promise in the course of the explanation more of that reciprocal confidence which is indispensable." Here was, indeed, a clumsy bid to separate the commissioners. The marvel is that it succeeded.

Pinckney and Marshall, finding that there was no possibility of dealing on terms of honor to themselves and their country with Talleyrand and the corrupt clique which governed France, abandoned their effort. Marshall with some difficulty secured passports as a diplomat. The Directory at one time even contemplated the indignity of sending him out of the country as a private citizen with no warrant for residence in France. The health of his daughter detained Pinckney for a time. He, too, encountered difficulties in obtaining a permit to reside in the south of France. It was Gerry, the third member, and from the American viewpoint the least distinguished, who was thus flattered by Talleyrand into a belief that he by remaining in Paris could accomplish unaided what his colleagues had found to be beyond their ability.

A proper sense of his country's dignity should have deterred Gerry from this idea. It is an axiom in foreign relations that politics ends at the water's edge. Gerry should have forgotten, for the moment at least, that he was an antiFederalist and remembered only that he was an American. Yet it is easy to judge him too harshly. Political parties were by this time sharply drawn in the new republic. The issues on which they divided were largely those of foreign

3 The entire document may be found in American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II, 169-182.

▲ Ibid. 191.

politics. The tariff had not yet assumed its full importance in party platforms, though the bank already exercised some influence. Strict versus loose construction of the Constitution was undoubtedly a party issue. But probably of more significance for creation of strong party sentiment, attachment to England as the source of commercial profits and the model of everything decent and in order created a definite bond of cohesion for Federalists or Anglophiles. Whereas, gratitude to monarchical France and enthusiasm for revolutionary France appealed to men of sentiment who viewed French aid to America as an expression of good will from one great people to another, and not the cold calculation of a despot's policy. Party lines being drawn on such a basis, and the fury of party antagonisms being such as seldom occurs in our later history, the proposal of the wily Talleyrand was a temptation to Gerry's partisanship quite as much as to his personal vanity. Like Monroe before him, Gerry was the victim of his French enthusiasms and of a party loyalty transcending his devotion to his government.

The mission having failed and French injuries to our commerce being uncurtailed, Adams, who alone of the statesmen of his administration seems to have been wholly American in his sentiments, was obliged to prepare for war. The President had long since divested himself of any gratitude to France. In his opinion, nations never acted save on the principle of self-interest. Why waste gratitude on a nation which in the pursuit of her own objects helped us incidentally? On the other hand, the man who had for years danced attendance on haughty ministers in London could not possibly entertain any enthusiasm for that England to which his Federalist associates seemed so passionately attached. So remote indeed was Adams from the Anglophiles that at the outset of his term the anti-Federalists sought to draw him to themselves as leader of their party. And Jefferson, to whom that honor rightfully belonged, was willing to efface himself to obtain so valuable a recruit."

5 Very cordial expressions to and concerning Adams may be found in The Works of Thomas Jefferson (Federal Edition), VIII, 255, and 259-261.